India
India known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia; the Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Gupta empires. In the medieval era, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived, Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
A pluralistic and multi-ethnic society, it is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historical local appellation for the Indus River; the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus". The geographical term Bharat, recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations, it is a modernisation of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan is a Middle Persian name for India, it was introduced into India by the Mughals and used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety; the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh. After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, storage of agricultural surplus, appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan; these developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan, relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilization engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones; the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.
Most historians consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas; the emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of Mahavira.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Kushner is an American writer of fantasy novels. From 1996 until 2010, she was the host of the radio program Sound & Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International. Kushner was born in Washington, D. C. and grew up in Ohio. She graduated from Barnard College, she lives in sometime collaborator, Delia Sherman. They held a wedding in 1996 and were married in Boston in 2004. Kushner identifies as bisexual. Kushner's first books were five Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks. During that period, she published her first novel, Swordspoint in 1987. A sequel set 18 years after Swordspoint, called The Privilege of the Sword, was published in July 2006, with a first hardcover edition published in late August 2006 by Small Beer Press; the Fall of the Kings is set 40 years after Swordspoint. All three books are considered mannerpunk novels, take place in a nameless imaginary capital city and its raffish district of Riverside, where swordsmen-for-hire ply their trade. From 2011 to 2014 audiobook versions of all three novels were produced under the label of Neil Gaiman Presents.
The Swordspoint adaptation won the 2013 Audie Award for Best Audio Drama, an Earphones Award from AudioFile, the 2013 Communicator Award: Gold Award of Excellence. The adaptation of The Fall of the Kings won the 2014 Wilbur Award. Kushner's second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award in 1991, she has published short stories and poetry in various anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Borderland Series of urban fantasy anthologies for teenage readers. In 2002, she released a CD of her story The Golden Dreydl: A Klezmer Nutcracker, which uses music from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker to tell a Hanukkah story; the music on the CD is performed by Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. The Golden Dreydl won a Gracie Award from American Women in Television. A live theater version of The Golden Dreydl was performed in 2008 and 2009 at Vital Theater in New York City, written by Kushner and directed by Linda Ames Key. In 2007, along with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom, scripted the musical audio drama The Witches of Lublin for public radio.
Based on the history of Jewish women who were klezmer musicians in 18th Century Europe, The Witches of Lublin premiered on radio stations nationwide in April 2011 with performances by Tovah Feldshuh and Simon Jones. It won the 2012 Wilbur Award for Radio. In 2011 she co-edited Welcome to Bordertown, an anthology of new stories from Terri Windling's seminal shared-world series. In an audiobook adaptation Neil Gaiman read his own work, set to an original score by Boiled in Lead's Drew Miller. With Sherman and others, she is involved in the interstitial art movement, she is the co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Endicott Studio and has taught classes and seminars as part of Hollins University's MFA program. 47. Outlaws of Sherwood Forest 56; the Enchanted Kingdom 58. Statue of Liberty Adventure 63. Mystery of the Secret Room 86. Knights of the Round Table Swordspoint The Fall of the Kings Nominated for Mythopoeic Award Adult Literature Nominated for Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel Nominated for 2003 Gaylactic Spectrum Award Best Novel The Privilege of the Sword Winner of 2007 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel Nominated for 2007 Nebula Award, Best Novel Nominated for 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Award Best Novel The Man with the Knives Thomas the Rhymer Winner of 1991 World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award St. Nicholas and the Valley Beyond the World's Edge Basilisk Nominated for Balrog Award for Best Fantasy Anthology The Horns of Elfland Nominated for Locus Award Best Anthology Welcome to Bordertown Official website Ellen Kushner at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Ellen Kushner at Library of Congress Authorities, with 18 catalog records
Grimms' Fairy Tales
Grimms' Fairy Tales known as the Children's and Household Tales, is a collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jakob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. The first edition contained 86 stories, by the seventh edition in 1857, had 211 unique fairy tales. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were two of nine children from their mother Dorothea and father Philipp Wilhelm Grimm. Philipp was a regarded district magistrate in Steinau, near Kassel. Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to school for a classical education once they were of age, while their father was working, they were hard-working pupils throughout their education. They started to pursue a degree in law. However, in 1796, their father died at the age of 44 from pneumonia; this was a tragic time for the Grimms because the family lost all financial support and relied on their aunt, Henriette Zimmer, grandfather, Johanne Hermann Zimmer. At the age of 11, Jacob was compelled to provide for his family. After down-sizing their home because of financial reasons, Henriette sent Jacob and Wilhelm to study at the prestigious high school, Lyzeum, in Kassel.
In school, their grandfather wrote to them saying that because of their current situation, they needed to apply themselves industriously to secure their future welfare. Shortly after attending Lyzeum, their grandfather died and they were again left to themselves to support their family in the future; the two became intent on becoming the best students at Lyzeum, since they wanted to live up to their deceased father. They established similar work habits, they shared the same bed and room at school. After four years of rigorous schooling, Jacob graduated head of his class in 1802. Wilhelm contracted asthma and scarlet fever, which delayed his graduation by one year although he was head of his class. Both were given special dispensations for studying law at the University of Marburg, they needed this dispensation because their social standing at the time was not high enough to have normal admittance. University of Marburg was a small, 200-person university where most students were more interested in activities than schooling.
Most of the students received stipends though they were the richest in the state. The Grimms did not receive any stipends because of their social standing. Jacob showed proof of his hard work ethic and quick intelligence. Wilhelm joined Jacob at the university, Jacob drew the attention of Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, founder of its historical school of law, he became a huge personal and professional influence on the brothers. Throughout their time at university, the brothers became quite close with Savigny and were able to use his personal library as they became interested in German law and folklore. Savigny asked Jacob to join him in Paris as Jacob went with him for a year. While he was gone, Wilhelm became interested in German literature and started collecting books. Once Jacob returned to Kassel in 1806, he decided to quit studying law and instead spent his full efforts on German literature. While Jacob studied literature and took care of their siblings, Wilhelm received his degree in law at Marburg.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Jacob interrupted his studies to serve the Hessian War Commission. In 1808, their mother died and it was hard on Jacob because he took the position in the family as a father figure, while trying to be a brother. From 1806 to 1810, the Grimm family had enough money to properly feed and clothe themselves. During this time and Wilhelm were concerned about the stability of the family. Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano were good friends of the brothers and wanted to publish folk tales, so they asked the brothers to collect oral tales for publication; the Grimms collected many old books and asked friends and acquaintances in Kassel to tell tales and to gather stories from others. Jacob and Wilhelm sought to collect these stories in order to write a history of old German Poesie and to preserve history; the first volume of the first edition was published in 1812. For the second edition, two volumes were issued in 1819 and a third in 1822; the third edition appeared in 1837.
Stories were added, subtracted, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 211 tales. All editions were extensively illustrated, first by Philipp Grot Johann and, after his death in 1892, by German illustrator Robert Leinweber; the first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter. Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel to a stepmother, were made with an eye to such suitability. Jack Zipes believes that the Grimms made the change in editions because they “held motherhood sacred”, they removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, thus naively revealing to the witch Dame Gothel her pregnancy and the prince's visits—but, in many respects, violence when punishing villains, was increased.
The brothers' initial intention of their first book, Children’s and
Hungary
Hungary is a country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres in the Carpathian Basin, it borders Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Austria to the northwest, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a medium-sized member state of the European Union; the official language is Hungarian, the most spoken Uralic language in the world, among the few non-Indo-European languages to be spoken in Europe. Hungary's capital and largest city is Budapest; the territory of modern Hungary was for centuries inhabited by a succession of peoples, including Celts, Germanic tribes, West Slavs and the Avars. The foundations of the Hungarian state were established in the late ninth century CE by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád following the conquest of the Carpathian Basin, his great-grandson Stephen I ascended the throne in 1000, converting his realm to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a regional power, reaching its cultural and political height in the 15th century.
Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Hungary was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. It came under Habsburg rule at the turn of the 18th century, joined Austria to form the Austro–Hungarian Empire, a major European power; the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I, the subsequent Treaty of Trianon established Hungary's current borders, resulting in the loss of 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Following the tumultuous interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a socialist republic spanning four decades; the country gained widespread international attention as a result of its 1956 revolution and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became a democratic parliamentary republic.
Hungary is an OECD high-income economy and has the world's 58th largest economy by PPP. It ranks 45th on the Human Development Index, owing in large part to its social security system, universal health care, tuition-free secondary education. Hungary's rich cultural history includes significant contributions to the arts, literature, sports and technology, it is the 13th most popular tourist destination in Europe, attracting 15.8 million international tourists in 2017, owing to attractions such as the largest thermal water cave system in the world, second largest thermal lake, the largest lake in Central Europe and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. Hungary's cultural and academic prominence classify it as a middle power in global affairs. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and has been part of the Schengen Area since 2007, it is a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe, the Visegrád Group.
The "H" in the name of Hungary is most due to early founded historical associations with the Huns, who had settled Hungary prior to the Avars. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Byzantine Greek Oungroi. According to an explanation,the Greek name was borrowed from Old Bulgarian ągrinŭ, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the collective name for the tribes who joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars; the Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of ország. The word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri; the first element magy is from Proto-Ugric *mäńć-'man, person' found in the name of the Mansi people. The second element eri,'man, lineage', survives in Hungarian férj'husband', is cognate with Mari erge'son', Finnish archaic yrkä'young man'; the Roman Empire conquered the territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century, Pannonia was part of the Roman Empire, located within part of Hungary's territory.
Around AD 41–54, a 500-strong cavalry unit created the settlement of Aquincum and a Roman legion of 6,000 men was stationed here by AD 89. A civil city grew in the neighbourhood of the military settlement and in AD 106 Aquincum became the focal point of the commercial life of this area and the capital city of the province of Pannonia Inferior; this area now corresponds to the Óbuda district of Budapest, with the Roman ruins now forming part of the modern Aquincum museum. Came the Huns, a Central Asian tribe who built a powerful empire. After Hunnish rule, the Germanic Ostrogoths and Gepids, the Avar Khaganate, had a presence in the Carpathian Basin. In the 9th century, East Francia, the First Bulgarian Empire and Great Moravia ruled the territory of the Carpathian Basin; the freshly unified Hungarians led by Árpád, settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895. According to linguistic evidence, they originated from an ancient Uralic-speaking population that inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.
As a federation of united tribes, Hungary was established in 895, some 50 years after the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843, before the unification of the Anglo-Saxon king
Gloria Grahame
Gloria Grahame Hallward, known professionally as Gloria Grahame, was an American stage, television actress and singer. She began her acting career in theatre, in 1944 made her first film for MGM. Despite a featured role in It's a Wonderful Life, MGM did not believe she had the potential for major success, sold her contract to RKO Studios. Cast in film noir projects, Grahame was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Crossfire, would win the award for her work in The Bad and the Beautiful, she achieved her highest profile with Sudden Fear, Human Desire, The Big Heat, Oklahoma!, but her film career began to wane soon afterwards. Grahame returned to work on the stage, but continued to appear in films and television productions in supporting roles. In 1974, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, it went into remission less than a year and Grahame returned to work. In 1980, the cancer returned but Grahame refused to seek treatment. Choosing instead to continue working, she traveled to Britain to appear in a play.
Her health, however and she developed peritonitis after undergoing a procedure to remove fluid from her abdomen in September 1981. She returned to New York City, where she died in October 1981. Grahame was born in California, she was raised a Methodist. Her father, Reginald Michael Bloxam Hallward, was an author; the couple had an actress who married John Mitchum. During Gloria's childhood and adolescence, her mother taught her acting. Grahame attended Hollywood High School before dropping out to pursue acting. Grahame was signed to a contract with MGM Studios under her professional name after Louis B. Mayer saw her performing on Broadway for several years. Grahame made her film debut in Blonde Fever and scored one of her most praised roles as the flirtatious Violet Bick, saved from disgrace by George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947. Grahame was featured in film noir pictures as a tarnished beauty with an irresistible sexual allure.
During this time, she made films for several Hollywood studios. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Crossfire. Grahame starred with Humphrey Bogart in the film In a Lonely Place for Columbia Pictures, a performance for which she gained praise. Though today it is considered among her finest performances, it wasn't a box-office hit and Howard Hughes, owner of RKO Studios, admitted that he never saw it; when she asked to be loaned out for roles in Born Yesterday and A Place in the Sun, Hughes refused and instead made her do a supporting role in Macao. Despite only appearing for a little over nine minutes on screen, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in MGM's The Bad and the Beautiful. Other memorable roles included the scheming Irene Neves in Sudden Fear, the femme fatale Vicki Buckley in Human Desire, mob moll Debby Marsh in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat in which, in a horrifying off-screen scene, she is scarred by hot coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin's character.
Grahame appeared as wealthy seductress Harriet Lang in Stanley Kramer's Not as a Stranger starring Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra. Grahame did her own stunts as Angel the Elephant Girl in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Oscar for best film of 1952. Grahame's career began to wane after her performance in the musical film Oklahoma!. Grahame, whom audiences were used to seeing as a film noir siren, was viewed by some critics to be miscast as an ignorant country lass in a wholesome musical, the paralysis of her upper lip from plastic surgery altered her speech and appearance. Additionally, Grahame was rumored to have been difficult on the set of Oklahoma!, upstaging some of the cast and alienating her co-stars. She began a slow return to the theater, returned to films to play supporting roles in minor releases, she guest-starred in television series, including the sci-fi series The Outer Limits. In the episode of that series titled "The Guests", Grahame plays a forgotten film star living in the past.
She appears in an episode of The Fugitive and an episode of Burke's Law. Grahame can be seen as well in a 1970 episode of Mannix titled “Duet for Three” and in small roles in the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and Seventh Avenue; the play The Time of Your Life was revived in March 17, 1972 at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles with Grahame, Henry Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Lewis J. Stadlen, Ron Thompson, Jane Alexander, Richard X. Slattery and Pepper Martin among the cast, with Edwin Sherin directing. Over time Grahame became concerned with her physical appearance, she began stuffing tissue under it, which she felt gave her a sexier look. Several co-stars discovered this during kissing scenes. In the mid-1940s, Grahame began undergoing small cosmetic procedures on her lips and face. According to her niece, Vicky Mitchum, Grahame's obsession with her looks l
Russia
Russia the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres, Russia is by far or by a considerable margin the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, the ninth most populous, with about 146.77 million people as of 2019, including Crimea. About 77 % of the population live in the European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world and the second largest city in Europe. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, China and North Korea, it shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U. S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' disintegrated into a number of smaller states; the Grand Duchy of Moscow reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and achieved independence from the Golden Horde. By the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state; the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War.
The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Lithuania, it is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2018. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally; the country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an active global partner of ASEAN, as well as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Trade Organization, as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union, along with Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan; the name Russia is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the history, the country was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля", which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography.
The name Rus itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that became Kievan Rus. An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe; the current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía—spelled Ρωσία in Modern Greek. The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly
Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer who published nearly 600 Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. The first edition of his collection was published in eight volumes from 1855–67, earning him the reputation as being the Russian counterpart to the Brothers Grimm. Alexander Afanasyev was born in the town of Boguchar in the Voronezh Governorate of the Russian Empire into a family of modest means, his mother Varvara Mikhailovna Afanasyeva came from common people. Alexander was her seventh child; the children were raised by their father Nikolai Ivanovich Afanasyev, a Titular councillor who served as a prosecutor's assistant on probable causes and whom Alexander described as a man of high intellectual and moral qualities, "deservedly known as the smartest person in the whole uyezd". In three years the family moved to Voronezh where Alexander spent his childhood, he became addicted to reading early in his life, having access to the well-stocked library left by his grandfather, as well as to various magazines.
In 1837 he was sent to the Voronezh male gymnasium, in 1844 he entered the Law Faculty of the University of Moscow which he finished in 1848. There he attended the lectures of Konstantin Kavelin, Timofey Granovsky, Sergey Solovyov, Stepan Shevyryov, Osip Bodyansky and Fyodor Buslaev, he published a series of articles on government economy during the times of Peter the Great, on the Pskov Judicial Charter and other topics in the Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski magazines. Despite being one of the most promising students, he failed to become a professor; the conservative Minister of National Enlightenment, Count Sergey Uvarov, who oversaw the final exams, attacked Afanasyev's essay which discussed the role of autocracy in the development of Russian criminal law during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1849 Konstantin Kavelin helped him to get a place at the Moscow's Main Archive Directorate under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire, here Afanasyev worked for the next 13 years.
During that time he met many people of science and culture, collected a lot of ancient books and manuscripts that formed a huge library. His articles, reviews and historical works appeared in the leading Russian magazines, newspapers and scientific periodicals, his essays on Russian satire of the 18th century and on the works of prominent writers and publishers resulted in an 1859 monograph «Русские сатирические журналы 1769—1774 г.», published in'Otechestvennye Zapiski'. In 1855 he headed the state commission responsible for publication of legislative and literary works. From 1858 to 1861 he worked as the main editor of the short-lived magazine "Bibliographical Notes" which served as a cover for collecting materials and revolutionary literature for the socialist in exile Alexander Herzen. In 1862 the authorities arrested the Narodnik Nikolay Chernyshevsky, while other people associated with Herzen,i ncluding Afanasiev, came under suspicion, his flat was searched, while nothing was revealed, he still lost his place at the Moscow Archives.
After his dismissal he couldn't find a stable job for several years and had to sell his library to feed his family. After that he worked as a secretary at the Moscow City Duma and at the Moscow Congress of Justices of the Peace while continuing his ethnographical research, he wrote a large theoretical work - "The Poetic Outlook of Slavs about Nature" - which came out between 1865 and 1869. In 1870 his Русские детские сказки were published. Afanasyev spent his last years living in penury, he died in Moscow aged 45. He was buried at the Pyatnitskoye cemetery. Afanasyev became interested in old Slav traditions and stories in the 1850s, his early scholarly articles, including - «Ведун и ведьма». In such an interpretation, he regarded the fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful as depicting the conflict between the sunlight, the storm, dark clouds. A great archivist, his works provide copious information, evidence and passages of the old chronicles relating to Old Russian culture and tradition, as well as other Indo-European languages and legends, in particular German traditions.
In the early 1850s, being known for his articles, Afanasyev began to think about a collection of folk tales. He was asked by the Russian Geographical Society of Saint Petersburg to publish the folktales archives that the Society had been in possession of for about ten years; these archives are at the start of his Collection. Afanasyev chose 74 tales out of t
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